Young people should have access to affordable, youth-friendly and accessible housing services.

What is the situation?      

Young people living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods:

  • Experience serious barriers to living independently.
  • Are unable to access decent, affordable and secure housing.
  • Are discriminated against in the private housing market and are often unable to access social housing.
  • Are at risk of homelessness or live in poor conditions, which negatively affect their health and well being and prevents them from continuing their education or getting a job.

 

Transcript:
"The main issue at the moment is that Ireland is coming out of a recession, so we have a housing crisis which in turn obviously negatively impacts on the young people we are working with, so the private sector has a monopoly on the market at the moment, which means that our young people they just can’t access housing, they don’t have the money, they  don’t have the education, and they find, I suppose, that the private landlords want people who are working, people they don’t have to claim benefits for."

What should public authorities do?

  • Improve access to suitable and affordable housing for young people from disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
  • Consider the housing needs of young people – especially vulnerable young people, families, victims of violence and minority groups – when making and delivering housing policy, strategy and services.
  • Involve young people and other vulnerable groups in making any decisions that affect their access to housing.
  • Simplify the way in which young people can get help and support when they have difficulties with their housing.
  • Improve coordination between public housing and other social services.
  • Ensure that young people have information about how to access housing and help with housing. This information should be youth friendly and available in places where young people go, such as youth information centres and youth centres.
  • Encourage and support the creation of different types of housing such as social housing and private rental housing so that young people can find the right option for their needs.
  • Ensure the diversity of local communities by the use of mixed housing schemes. People from different backgrounds and cultures should not be segregated.
  • Ensure that the houses young people live in (public and private) are safe, clean and allow them to be healthy.
  • Make sure that housing providers meet minimum standards. Carry out spot inspections. Provide a way for people to make complaints about poor housing standards and work with consumer protection organisations.
  • Provide youth friendly communication to ensure that young people know about their housing rights.
  • Provide “halting sites” for Roma and Traveller communities with access to clean water, electricity and proper sanitation. If necessary, provide support to Roma and Traveller communities and the local community to overcome any conflicts that arise.

Examples from the Enter! Project

The Bristol Nightstop in the UK project is a community response to a community problem.  The project is funded by a grant from the UK National Lottery, which pays for a Project Leader, a Host Co-ordinator and a Key Worker who works alongside other volunteers and experts. The project provides accommodation for young homeless people seven days a week all year round.

When young people aged 16-25 years of age are homeless and have no other options Bristol Nightstop arranges temporary and emergency accommodation in the homes of hosts.  The hosts are vetted and trained through the project’s volunteer ‘Host Network’ and they offer a warm room in their homes, an evening meal, breakfast, support and compassion.  They are recruited, trained, supported and supervised by Bristol Nightstop project workers.

The project also provides emergency key worker support to give expert advice, help young people to return home where possible, and to support them when and where they need it.  A key objective of the project is to provide young homeless people with clear, expert advice that facilitates their transition into safe emergency accommodation and supports them accessing longer term options.

Staff at Bristol Nightstop work closely with a range of partner agencies, organisations and service providers in Bristol.  These support networks and partnerships work together to prevent young people from entering into a cycle of homelessness and support them from day one for as long as it takes, so as to ensure that they can break free from the cycle of homelessness at the earliest opportunity.

FEANTSA – Youth network against homelessness has identified four main structural causes that hinder the access to adequate housing of young people in Europe today:

  • Young people live in the parental home much longer; in many European countries into their late 20s/early 30s.
  • Young people stay in education longer and go on to higher education in a larger numbers.
  • Full-time jobs are scarce and pay less.
  • Housing prices and rents have increased and the availability of affordable housing has decreased substantially over the last decades.

More young people than in previous generations living in precarious or risky situations in all European countries. This means that the risk of becoming homeless, especially among already marginalized groups with low social or economic capital has increased.

Young people  in the social welfare system often become homeless because, in many jurisdictions, young people “age out” of care at 18 or 21,which means that for many young people the transition from child welfare support is not to self-sufficiency, but rather to homelessness. Young people involved in the juvenile or adult justice system often leave prison without sufficient discharge planning and support.

Additionally, research has shown that key triggers to homelessness are not only personal issues such as a substance misuse or mental health but are often connected with issues such as domestic violence and family breakdown which means that the young person is often not in control of his/her precarious situation. Issues relating to sexual/gender identity are also one of the major causes for young people to leave home into precarious living conditions.

IGLYO and FEANTSA have organized in 2015 a study session to examine and address the challenges, causes and consequences of homeless among LGBTQ young people in Europe in the context in which a high percentage of homeless youth identifies as LGBTQ and the risks of violence, discrimination, heath issues, and substance abuse are increasing.

The network has also identified three main strategies to prevent youth homelessness:

  • Primary Prevention involves addressing structural factors that produce youth homelessness , including anti-poverty measures, affordable housing supply, working to prevent violence against children, etc.
  • Systems prevention means addressing the failures in other mainstream systems that go on to produce youth homelessness, such as problems in child protection, prisons and physical and mental health care services.
  • Early intervention refers to prevention strategies when young people are either ‘at risk’ of, or have recently experienced, homelessness, involving a ‘system of care’ approach (an integrated service delivery model) whereby young people, families and other adults providing support would be aware of who to contact in the case of the imminent homelessness of a young person in their care.Read more

Forced evictions

The practice of forced eviction involves the involuntary removal of persons from their homes or land, directly or indirectly attributable to the State. It entails the effective elimination of the possibility of an individual or group living in a particular house, residence or place, and the assisted (in the case of resettlement) or unassisted (without resettlement) movement of evicted persons or groups to other areas.

Various researches and reports indicate that tens of thousands of Roma have been the victims of forced and illegal evictions or are at risk of human rights violations in Europe, affecting in long term the young people and children who face such an experience.

Pata Rat

On 17 December 2010, 76 families were forcibly evicted without adequate notice by local authorities from Coastei Street in the centre of the city of Cluj-Napoca, in North-Western Romania. No consultation with the affected families took place prior to the eviction and no feasible alternatives to the eviction were explored. Those evicted were not given any written or detailed notification with sufficient notice, nor the opportunity to challenge the eviction decision. Forty of these families were relocated to inadequate housing conditions on the outskirts of the city (in Pata Rat), close to the city’s garbage dump and a former chemical waste dump, while the remaining families were left without alternative housing.
Phiren Amenca, a youth network of Roma and non-Roma organized an international solidarity march in 2015 with those evicted in Pata Rat. The march gathered some 500 people– young and old, Roma and Non-Roma – who walked all the way from Pata Rât to Strada Coastei to remind the city and its citizens of the evictions from 2010. Read more on www.sokeres.eu.